THE POISON GARDEN website

Pontifications on Poison

Being some ramblings on events associated with poisonous plants.

Sunday 26th February 2012

I sat down to write about one of the UN agencies involved in
the implementation of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic
Drugs and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The
International Narcotics Control Board has two functions; to make
sure that people who might benefit from the therapeutic
properties of these substances are able to get them and to limit
the diversion of such medicines to illicit use. That’s my
summary;
the full mandate can be read here. The INCB has just
published its projection for the 2012 requirements for these
‘Narcotic Drugs’ together with actual data for 2010. You can
access the report via this page.
http://www.incb.org/incb/en/narcotic-drugs-technical-report_2011.html
It’s a 444 page document but it is in three languages so it is
not as daunting as it sounds, though the pdf download is quite a
size.

Before starting, I thought I’d have a quick look at Twitter
and, as a result, I’m going to be writing about another UN body,
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

‘Yury Fedotov is the Executive Director of
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and regularly uses
Twitter to make announcements about UNODC affairs and events of
interest. I should say that someone in the UNODC office tweets
in Fedotov’s name because I’d be very surprised if he is
actually composing them himself. Given what follows, I’d be
horrified if he produces his own Tweets.’

That statement is just as true today. I have to wonder if Mr
Fedotov really thinks the best use of his, undoubtedly
expensive, time is sending Tweets and I’m particularly concerned
if he thinks this is a good way to relax on a Sunday.

The first tweet of a group of four said;

‘#Afghanistan has recently emerged as the
major producer of #cannabis resin, competing to #opium poppy.’

I’m not sure how you would justify saying ‘competing to
#opium poppy’ because I doubt if it is exclusively farmers
switching from
Papaver somniferum, opium poppy, to
Cannabis sativa, marijuana. Of course, if Afghan farmers
were giving up growing opium poppies in favour of cannabis that
would be something that many people who understand relative
harms would applaud.

The second tweet said;

‘#cannabis use can damage the brain, has
negative effects on memory, including learning ability, and is
associated with mental illness.’

‘Can’, of course, doesn’t mean ‘does’ so that’s might be a
fair comment but saying ‘has’ rather than ‘may have’ takes it
beyond the truth.

The fourth tweet said;

‘#cannabis remains the second most cited
drug after alcohol causing car crashes.’

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take from that. To me, it
says there is more to be gained by reducing the number of car
crashes due to alcohol but I don’t think that’s what was
intended.

But it was the third tweet that provoked me to respond;

‘#cannabis is a gateway drug that always
precedes the use of "heavy" drugs, including cocaine, opiates
and synthetics.’

‘Cannabis is a gateway drug’ is, quite simply, a lie. I know
it is a lie because the UNODC says so. The most recent World
Drug Report says that between 125 and 203 million people
consumed cannabis in 2009 and between 12 and 21 million opioid
users. Add to that the 14.2 to 20.5 million cocaine users and
you still find that, quite clearly, the overwhelming majority of
cannabis users do not go on to other substances.

Of course, the tweet actually has it reversed. It does not
say that people who use cannabis go on to use other drugs,
though that it what is implied by the word ‘gateway’. What it
claims is that everyone who uses ‘heavy’ drugs started with
cannabis. That use of the word ‘always’ is completely
unjustifiable and not only because there are heroin users who
started by receiving poorly controlled pain relief leading to
addiction as well as ecstasy users (considered by UNODC to be a
‘heavy’ drug) who know that cannabis does not provide what they
are looking for.

But, even if the word ‘always’ had not been used, the comment
is still wrong. Even if every user of ‘heavy’ drugs began by
using cannabis, that does not mean that every user of cannabis
will become a user of ‘heavy’ drugs. That can be demonstrated
from simple logic; just because every professional basketball
player is tall doesn’t mean that every tall person will become a
professional basketball player. But, as noted above, it is also
demonstrated by the UNODC’s own figures.

When I tweeted this user
before
about a discrepancy between his claimed value for a heroin
seizure and the value being reported in the local media of one
of the countries concerned I received no reply so I don’t expect
anything this time. On that occasion, I wrote ‘telling lies is
risky because if it is easy for people to get at the truth you
lose credibility and make yourself look foolish’.

When will the UNODC learn that talking as though you are
concerned about reducing the harm caused by drugs means nothing
if you lie about drugs and make yourself irrelevant?